1. Field of Invention
The present invention relates generally to an apparatus and method for correlating daily consumable intakes with physiological parameters. More specifically, it relates to a computer-assisted system and method for adjudging the effect of consumable intakes, such as the amount of calories, fat, protein, carbohydrate, minerals and vitamins consumed daily, or the amount of a drug ingested daily, on physiological parameters, such as weight, blood glucose levels, or red blood cell count.
2. Brief Description of the Prior Art
A great body of literature has been published in the last fifty years pertaining to the importance of good consumption habits in the maintenance of health. While the general public is far more educated as to such matters than their ancestors, several studies suggest poor consumption habits still pervade in our society.
Nutritional studies suggest that people today continue to consume foods containing high amounts of saturated fat, too many calories, and too few vitamins and minerals, although they know these foods to be "unhealthy." Likewise, public awareness of the fact that drugs may cause serious side-effects, has not eventuated in a substantial reduction in the misuse and over-use of, for example, over-the-counter medications. A significant factor in many people's poor diets and abuse of medications is the tremendous explosion of multi-ingredient pre-packaged foodstuffs and drugs that has occurred within the last century.
In response to an outcry of world-wide health experts with respect to less than "healthy" ingredients not infrequently found in pre-packaged consumables, many governments have mandated that manufacturers of pre-packaged consumables provide in their labelling certain consumption information such as the identity of the ingredients, the concentration of ingredients and/or nutritional information. In the United States foodstuff information not atypically includes the ingredients contained within the foodstuff, the number of calories in a serving, the number of servings in a container, the percentage of fat, protein, carbohydrates provided by a serving, and a measure of the vitamins and minerals provided by the foodstuff. Over-the-counter medications are not infrequently labelled to delineate the drug products, and concentration of drug products, contained within each tablet of the medication.
In order to keep the public more informed concerning the foodstuffs they eat, some governments have further required manufacturers to compare the nutritional contents of their products against a standard daily nutritional recommendation, e.g. the "Daily Value" or "Recommend Daily Allowance" or "Minimum Daily Allowance." Such comparisons are often made in terms of percentages. While such information has gone a long way towards educating people with respect to the nutritional value of what they eat, most people do not have the time or patience to consider whether the foods they eat over a day, week or month are providing them with a nutritionally balanced diet. The latter observation is confirmed by the large number of obese people in the Western World.
In a similar vein, many governments require manufacturers of drugs to label their drugs with warnings concerning the side-effects that may be elicited by consumption of the drug. While most consumers are aware of the existence of warning labelling, few people take the time to read all of the warnings appended with every drug which they consume daily. This is particularly true with respect to over-the-counter medications. Side-effects caused by these drugs are often attributed to other causes.
Presently, monitoring of dietary and medication consumption, as well as the consumption of other consumables, is cumbersome. Such monitoring is conventionally done by use of log books in which the subject records the consumables, and the quantity of consumables consumed during a particular day.
Nutrition counseling not uncommonly involves the use of complex algorithms and calculations. Dietary diligence or the use of restricted menu lists is frequently prescribed in a universal manner, rather than tailoring the counseling to the individuals themselves. Nearly everyone is familiar with diet books which propound strict regimens of meals or which limit food consumption to particular food stuffs. More recently, cards which permit persons to select form a prolifery of food stuffs in select categories have been introduced. While easier to follow than strict dietary regimens, such cards fail to take into account the widespread "cheating" that occurs by persons throughout the day. Specialized meals are not always available to a person during the day, especially at work.
Counseling with respect to drug use is presently limited mostly to consultations with pharmacists and physicians. Consultations with physicians tend to be brief and nearly always center on the appropriate use of prescribed medications. Consultations with pharmacists while generally longer, and while often concerning both prescription and over-the-counter medications, are often limited by the ever-increasing time constraints being placed on pharmacists to fill more prescriptions per hour. As with nutritional consultations, drug consultations frequently involve the use of algorithms, especially in regard to the determination of when steady-state blood levels, or maximum blood levels, of a drug given on a repeated dosage schedule will be achieved. Variations in physiological parameters often plateau when drug blood concentrations level off.
The monitoring of consumable intake, especially with regard to nutritional balance and drug intake, is arguably as important as the monitoring of such physiological parameters as blood pressure and pulse rate alone. Numerous computerized devices have been introduced to record and display physiological parameters, see e.g. U.S. Pat. No. 4,232,682 (temperature, pulse rate, and respiration rate). Such devices have greatly aided physicians in tailoring therapeutic strategies to the individual especially if such measurements are taken over a long period of time. For example, a patient's drug therapy is often based on multi-daily blood pressure readings taken by a patient with a computerized blood pressure monitor, such multiple readings being far more indicative of the patient's blood pressure status than one isolated reading at the physician's office.
Nutritional status has long been known to impact greatly upon physiological homeostasis. Over the past two centuries, scientists have discovered numerous components in our foodstuffs that are necessary to our health--many of these substances being referred to as "essential vitamins." In the last half of the twentieth century, scientists further discovered that many substances present in foodstuffs, while not needed by the body for immediate survival, greatly aid in the maintenance of good health--e.g. fiber and "non-essential vitamins". Scientists further learned that balance in protein/fat/carbohydrate consumption is also of importance in longevity.
In a similar vein, consumption of drugs, while often ameliorating a perturbation in homeostasis, not infrequently cause physiological abnormalities themselves. This effect is often noted when patients chose over-the-counter ("OTC") drugs without the aid of health professionals. For example, decongestants may increase blood pressure.
Consumable intakes may have significant effects upon the morbidity rate of persons inflicted with several diseases. Many people require a special diet which places their nutritional needs outside of the standard daily nutritional recommendation. Further, many people can not consume certain drugs which are freely available in OTC preparations.
For example, diabetics are often cautioned by their physicians to carefully monitor their daily intake of protein, fat and carbohydrates. For many diabetics, variations in dietary consumption, especially of carbohydrates, can have dramatic effects on their requirement for insulin. Different foodstuffs not uncommonly have different effects on a person's blood glucose level, a level which is important for good heath. Blood glucose measurements are taken by diabetics numerous times during the day, especially after meals. Diabetics are frequently warned to refrain from cough preparations etc., which contain high sucrose concentrations.
Consonantly, persons afflicted with Folling's disease ("PKU") must be careful with respect to their consumption of foods containing phenylalanine. Person's with Folling's disease have a congenital abnormality which eventuates in a deficit of phenylalanine 4-monoxygenase activity. Consumption of phenylalanine by PKU patients over prolonged periods of time may result in neurologic abnormalities. Person's with Folling's disease not uncommonly monitor their blood or urine phenylalanine levels daily.
As further example, persons with depression are not infrequently placed on monoamine oxidase inhibitors. Persons on the drug (and 2 weeks after discontinuing the drug) are cautioned against eating foods with high tyramine or tryptophan content. They are further cautioned about consuming drugs which contain decongestants. Consumption of any of these consumables may lead to a hypertensive crisis.
While much is known pertaining to the physiological effect of certain consumables in select maladies, little has been done to relate the effect of daily consumption of the multitude of consumables to physiological perturbations. The latter is most likely due to the difficulty in getting subjects to record their daily consumptions and the need to solve often complex algorithms in order to appropriately adjudge such relationships.
A relatively recent development in the consumable processing art, as well as product sales in general, has been the identification of a consumable by a unique identifier encoded in the form of a "bar code". Heretofore, the bar code has been used to identify the product and its manufacturer, used to re-order goods and employed at check-out counters for coupling the product to a price.